~ Feminism is for everyone!

Monthly Archives: May 2014

I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are black and white, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native American, and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered. And I am speaking to you all.

-Dr. Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

I have struggled to put into words the shade of grief I felt on Wednesday after I learned of the passing of Dr. Maya Angelou, to describe the ache I have continued to feel in the days since. But as I reflect on her life and what she meant to me, there is one word that can sum it up: Auntie.

Maya Angelou touched so many. Her literary works inspired, her activism ignited, her teaching empowered, and for a lucky few her personal mentor-ship guided. I can’t speak for all those who were impacted by Dr. Angelou’s life, but I can speak to the way she impacted me and the community of black women that surrounds me. Over the past two days, I have heard and seen so many black women in my life say that they think of Maya as a family member, an elder, a spiritual guide, and that losing her feels like we “lost an Aunt.” It’s because we have.

She was our Auntie. That fly, fabulous, jet setting aunt with the fascinating stories. Dr. Angelou embodied black girl possibility. Here was a woman who grew up in the deep Jim Crow South. Poor. Black. Sexualized, used, and abused. The type of girl whom the world spits on. Yet in the pages of her books, the lines of her poetry, and the curve of her smile we knew her to be defiantly alive– traveling to places we had never heard of, delighting in the sensuality and beauty of her black body, gracing stages she was never supposed to step foot on, passing out her elegant, biting wisdom like first-aid kits for our black girl souls.

She was our Auntie. That aunt who just gets you, who seems like she can see your insides. Dr. Angelou understood the black girl struggle intimately. Here was a woman who understood our pain and our hopes, because she had felt them too. We are all forced to stand in the crooked room of a misogynoir world, and we all struggle to stand up straight in the mirror. Maya was in that crooked room with us- and she had not only discovered a way to see herself clearly, but amazingly, she could see us clearly too. She was right there by our sides, pushing and prodding and shaping us, showing us it was possible to hold our heads straight and align our spines with the sky.

Dr. Maya Angelou, we thank you. We are honored that you counted us among your Daughters, and that we may now count you among our Ancestors. We love you. Ashe.

In 1965, two women of Students for a Democratic Society, Casey Hayden and Mary King, wrote an essay bringing attention to the problem of sexism within SDS. In their essay, the authors cautiously raised the issue of sexism in the student movement (indeed, the subtitle of the essay, “A Kind of Memo,” suggested just how cautious they were), arguing that women engaged in movements for social justice needed to start communicating to both each other, and their fellow male activists about their experiences. Deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement, Hayden and King went out of their way to be clear that they were in no sense equating the discrimination and oppression they experienced as women with the oppression experienced by African Americans in the United States. Nonetheless, it had become increasingly clear to them that sexism did not stop at the door of the radical meeting house – it was a very real problem in the New Left community, and it had to be dealt with.

Two years later, frustrated by the tepid and insulting response of many men in SDS to their call for gender equality, the women of SDS again penned an essay which attempted to explain why attacking sexism was so important to the overall struggle for social justice. As they wrote:

“We seek the liberation of all human beings. The struggle for liberation of women must be part of the larger fight for human freedom. We recognize the difficulty our brothers will have in dealing with male chauvinism and we will assume our full responsibility in helping to resolve the contradiction. Freedom now! We love you!”

The journal New Left Notes published the essay, but it ran accompanied by this image:

He was a college student at a party school who wasn’t getting laid and he turned to men’s rights activists and pick-up artists to air out his frustrations. Now let’s be real for a second: I’m sure lots of us have experienced a time when we weren’t as awesomely successful in love as we would like to be — it’s a natural human experience. The problem, however, with MRAs and PUAs is that they turn this natural human experience into something that cruel women are purposely withholdingfrom men to everyone’s detriment. While any beginning statistics student will tell you that correlation (mass murder and involvement with MRAs) does not imply causation (the MRAs made him do it), the link is disturbing. The killer explained his motivations in a chilling YouTube video, [Name]’s[1] Retribution, in addition to a 137-page manifesto. In his style, rationale, and vocabulary he directly referenced the arguments espoused by Men’s Rights groups. This includes phrases like “true alpha male,” “If I can’t have you [hot sorority women], I’ll destroy you,” “I deserve it [sex with hot women] more than them [men for whom he perceived these women rejecting him],” and claiming to be “the supreme gentleman.”

In case you can’t see what the problems with this are, let me spell them out for you: Continue reading →

Real talk: sometimes it can be hard to choose the things that make you happy if they’re not what society tells us to do or be.

Interwoven systems of privilege and prejudice in the US want so many things from us. They want us to dress and act in a way that puts us comfortably within the bounds of the gender assigned to us at birth, be straight, be monogamous, be Christian (or at least believe in God), be a certain weight, talk a certain way (code-switching, anyone?), have a certain amount of sex, and on and on. It’s confining if you succeed and can be painful and dangerous if you fail. It’s suffocating.

The damage of narrow social expectations is twofold: external, and internal.

When we fail to meet these expectations we face shaming, discrimination, and even violence from those who want to “correct” us.

But even our own brains are working against us- we’ve been marinating in these systems of privilege and prejudice for our whole lives, for so long that we’ve absorbed them. So even when we know it’s bullshit, we still feel that reflexive shame, or loss, or fear, about claiming the things we want and the things we are that lie outside society’s box for us.

That friggin’ sucks.

It’s a good start to be able to see what’s happening clearly and know that it sucks and it’s bullshit, but sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes you just need a little extra inspiration to be brave and be yourself. Sometimes you need…

A SONG.

Or better yet: a playlist. Here are five songs to inspire you to do what makes you happy. Please share your own in the comments! Continue reading →

It may be an understatement that white cis-hetero bros, en masse, haven’t always been the best allies of feminism. So when this comic from College Humor (also not particularly a bastion of social justice advocacy) started showing up EVERYWHERE on my dash I was…cautious. Continue reading →

Today’s article is the first in a series of articles about a subject that is near and dear to my heart and, I suspect, to the hearts of all of you who have ever wanted a quick source of information about something new.

A few weeks ago, a Huff Post article To the Woman Behind Me in Line at the Grocery Store was circulating on my facebook news feed (spoiler: someone really needed to feed their kids but couldn’t, so a stranger bought them groceries. It was great). As I am among the .00001% of people under 75 years old who live without internet and like itthat way, I didn’t get around to reading it until just now.

It made me think about the strangers I’ve met through out my life who have been kind to me without any benefit to themselves. Like the time I was living out of my car (voluntarily), when an aging hippie on a bike befriended me in the Walmart parking lot. He offered to let me use his house to shower and cook my meals if I wanted. I politely declined, but he bought me dinner anyway.

Or the time I was lost in DC at 4 in the morning in a bad neighborhood and unable to find my way back to my car. I was coming from a party and wearing a mini dress, feeling vulnerable and wishing I had brought my pepper spray. Out of the blue a taxi cab pulled over, even though it already had a fare in the back seat. “You look lost,” the driver told me, “and I wouldn’t want to be walking around at this time of night, if I were you. Want a ride?” I clambered in. The cabbie dropped off his other fare, then drove me to the right street and helped me find my car. For the life of him, he would not accept payment for the ride.

Or the time I was 19 years old and working at Coldstone Creamery. I was clad in a dorky black visor, my hair was a mess, and I smelled of burnt waffle cones. A girl my age walked straight up to me and told me I had a beautiful smile. I grinned the rest of the night.

An important thing to think about is how different types of privilege play into the kindness I receive from others. Did the cabbie find me more approachable because I am white? Did the man at Walmart offer to let me use his house because I am small and sound educated? How would my experience be affected if I was a person of color? If I was a heavier person? If I was trans*? Continue reading →

Last week, TV networks announced sweeping cancellations, renewals and new shows for the fall season. As an unabashed television addict, my feelings about the new crop of announcements run the gamut from devastated (RIP Community) to elated (Brooklyn Nine-Nine! Yeah!). However, there are three shows in particular that have caught my attention:Fresh Off the Boat, Cristela, and Black-ish. All three shows, picked up by ABC, are family sitcoms focusing not on tokenized individuals of color, but on whole entire families of people of color!